Waste

She dropped the locket into my hand, and he died again, right in front of me.

Fuck lockets; how cliché. What about a blue Bic lighter? Psychics are cliché as hell, too. Whatever.

She handed me his blue Bic lighter. He smoked Pall Malls.

Pall Malls? Seriously?

He smoked Camel Lights.

Forget the cigarettes. Start over.

She handed me his wallet. The leather had a greasy feel to it.

What's your point?

I don't believe in hell, but some days I wish I did. Sometimes there is no other suitable punishment.

Bad verb tense. There's no conviction there.

Some villains deserve it.

Not villains. Men? Murderers?

Some monsters require it. The victims, too. They deserve to know you're burning.

Burning, blistering, broiling...

But this is all they get. Men in suits picking through their pockets for clues.

So, so cliché. This is all you get.

 

Technorati

Mailbox

Apparently, I'm considered a "paranormal news outlet." This fills my email inbox with all sorts of interesting press releases and promotions.

Crystal Stephens of Electric Artists writes to tell us that the new A&E show, Paranormal State, will premier on December 10th at 10 PM ET. They'll air two cases back to back, featuring a young boy whose story is similar to "The Sixth Sense" and a single mom whose home is haunted by a history of brutal murder.

David M Kriegher writes to announce his website Dark Stories, a collection of true and truish ghost stories presented in both French and English.

Thanks for sending in your paranormal stories. I apologize if your event passed before I got around to sharing it here.

For frequently-updated and all-encompassing paranormal news, try the Debris Field. Lesley has this news outlet thing down.

 

Technorati

Starry-Eyed

New

Sunday afternoon. Rainy and peaceful and beautiful. Tara and I were lying on my bed passing a joint back and forth. We're silent, enjoying the sleep-like quality of the day, until she says:

"I can see the future. Wanna try?"

Goofy fuck, I think. Tara's been my best friend since 3rd grade. Sometimes I think we don't have much in common anymore. She's into peasant skirts and power crystals and tofu. Me... not so much. But my life wouldn't be the same without her. She brings some magic (and marijuana) to my practicality. We indulge each other.

"Sure, Tara. How can I see the future?"

"Remember when you were a kid, and you'd press your hands against your eyes to see stars?"

"Yeah."

"Start there."

I closed my eyes and lightly pushed my palms against my lids.

"What do you see?"

"Corneal damage."

"You're no fun, Ashley. For real. Tell me what you see."

I sighed. "I see stars. I see swirls and galaxies and bursts of light. It's like I'm moving through space."

"Good. Now, keep your eyes closed."

She cupped my chin with her hand. I thought for a minute that she was going to kiss me, and I held my breath. Then she touched a fingertip to my forehead, and the stars came into focus.

A single galaxy zoomed in from my right. Its arms spun slowly, leaking light into the corners of my eyes. I fell into its pink clouds. I focused on one point of light until it expanded into a disc, then a great globe with a host of circling rocks, almost filling my vision. I watched the planet's meticulous spin, counting off time, speeding it up and slowing it down, but always moving forward, always to the future, always in one direction around a far away star.

I moved on, further in, to the smaller worlds. The black was so absolute, I could only aim my gaze at the sun in the center. Finally a blue speck appeared, grew, a tiny jewel expanding like a salt crystal - it overtook me until I was in that blue world.

Where I looked for ocean, I saw ice. Flat ice from horizon to horizon, and me getting closer and closer to the ground. I put out my hands to catch myself, and the world dissolved. I smelled the sweet smoke around me and heard the rain on the roof.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You took the pressure off your eyelids."

"They hurt."

"It will go away in a minute. So?"

I told Tara about what I'd seen.I felt like I'd let her down, forgetting myself and ending the vision too quickly. And she seemed genuinely disappointed.

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, no," she said. "You didn't do anything wrong. I think maybe you were in the wrong galaxy. That happens sometimes. But you lose a bit of the impressiveness of it when you don't get to peek down on humanity."

"It was beautiful."

"Yeah." She handed the joint to me.

"I think I'm good. Thanks."

I closed my eyes and tried to retrace my flight, as though I knew enough about the universe to determine where I'd been. But surely that was Jupiter I'd seen?

"Tara?"

"Mm."

"You don't think that was Earth?"

"Well, I hope not. Don't you?"

"I guess so."

"Even if it is, it doesn't really matter. How much time did you count off?"

"It didn't seem like that much."

She stretched and picked herself up off the bed. "I'm hungry. Italian?"

"Mexican. And margaritas."

"Yeah. Let's have a toast."

And she smiled the most beautiful smile in the world. She is my starry-eyed love, until the end of the universe.

 

Technorati

Under Sophie's Silk

NEW!

The rumors claimed her mother was a witch. That Sophie had burned her hand not while her mother made cornbread on an iron stove, but while she stirred evil spells in a cauldron. The effect was the same. Children were warned by their parents, or found her silk gloves strange, or were terrified when they saw what the gloves concealed.

Sophie herself couldn't remember exactly how it had happened. She was two, and she remembered the black iron, panic, not being able to get away. She remembered the pain, but that was it. According to the story she'd always believed, she'd rested her hand against an iron stove, and stuck. She passed out when they pulled her off. She'd healed, and could even use it normally. But for the rest of her life, she would have a perfect, round hole through the palm of her right hand. So when the bandages came off, the silk gloves went on.

But the older she got, the more she wondered. She saw more cauldrons in her dreams. She questioned more memories. But what really took some getting used to were the things she'd started seeing when she took her gloves off.

Alone, at night, she would hold up her hand in a greeting to no one in particular, and stare through that hole at the opposite wall. Sophie wondered how different things might be if she looked normal. If her mother weren't gone, if she weren't alone in the world. And eventually she'd console herself; remind herself how much worse it could be. But she'd still put the gloves back on before going to bed.

One night last December, though, she found she wasn't looking at the opposite wall. That she was, in fact, holding her hand up in greeting to someone. A man's face peered back at her through her palm.

She screamed, jumped out of her chair, and found... that she was still alone. That she was losing it. Just seeing things.

She gave up dwelling on her disfigurement for a few weeks afterward. Obviously, it wasn't doing her health much good. But old habits, especially the private self-destructions, die hard. And during a winter storm, drinking expensive wine from the bottle, she took off the glove and held up her hand.

The same face peered through, cocking an eyebrow. Sophie put down her hand. No one there. She lifted it again, and in a bravery that can only be explained by believing she was dreaming, said...

"Hello."

"I thought you could see me!"

"Yes, well, I'm still not sure if you're there or not."

"Me either, really. But it's nice to have someone to talk to."

And that was all they did. Talked about the war, Dostoevsky, their jobs. His name was Hobbes. He talked about becoming invisible - he wasn't sure if he was dead, he just knew that one day, he woke up and no one could see him. Sophie told him about her accident, and apologized for ignoring him for three weeks. And that she couldn't think of any way to help. It seemed silly to "make contact" and have no idea where to go from there. It wasn't like the movies at all.

"If I could come talk with you again, that would be a service in itself, ma'am." He tipped his hat, and she followed him with her hand as he opened and walked out the front door.

And that night, Sophie went to bed without her gloves on, feeling a little less alone in the world, and slept well. She may have had strange trials ahead of her, but during that first experience, she'd finally found a friend to help her through.

 

Technorati

Elise Goes Blind

Originally posted 2/13/06

Most people thought Elise was kind of weird. She frequently claimed she could see the backs of her irises or feel the blood as it travelled from her heart to her fingertips and back again. Elise, though, didn't think any of this was strange. She simply hadn't allowed the experience of living to desensitize her to the machinery of living.

Occasionally anyone can see the random movement of cells and fluid on the surface of their own eyes. Elise actually paid attention to it. On this morning, the movement was particularly vivid. Every particle in her body seemed to be excited and dancing; every particle in the world around her danced along. The water and walls all shimmered with possibility.

Every day Elise saw something new. She was convinced that other people simply weren't looking, or for some reason, not seeing.

This morning, as she hurried through the rain to her office building, she began to notice the rain light up as it landed on fellow pedestrians. The harder she looked, the more persistent the effect became. Slowing down to look around, she found a rainbow reflecting off the sea of people, barely enveloping each one of them.

In the dry, dim lobby, the colors didn't disappear as she'd expected. They became more distinct, with each person in the lobby giving off a different glow. This was something Elise had never believed in - but then again, she had never not believed in it either. She could actually see people's auras.

Her supervisor, Craig, bumped into her. "I'm so sorry," she blurted. "I guess I'm just kind of wandering this morning."

"I'm sorry," said Craig. "Want me to hold the elevator for you?"

Craig's aura was a bright orange. Elise considered him intense and ambitious, and kind as well, and thought it suited him perfectly. She stepped into the elevator.

To test out her new skill, she decided to go see Margaret, a bitchy gossip from the IT department. Though Elise considered few people enemies, she knew that if her work didn't require a friendly exterior, she and Margaret would be just that. Margaret didn't care who she talked about or if the stories were true. She didn't care how the pain she inflicted twisted people inside. Despite herself, Elise hated her.

Elise stopped outside of Margaret's doorway, forgetting what she had intended to ask about. She was surprised to see Margaret bathed in a soft pink. She was even more surprised when she noticed her own hand on the doorknob and the dark, ugly cloud surrounding it.

This wasn't what she wanted to see at all.

Elise never noticed the backs of her irises again.

 

Technorati